County pays demolition expenses on condemned properties

Published: Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 06:19 PM.

Carnley said no notices will be sent to the new owner address now that he is aware of it. He noted the process has taken over a year.

Carnley also said the county uses a private company to search for any other entities that have interests on the property. It found a mortgage company and sent it a letter, but nothing resulted from that.

The address was changed on Sept. 20, 2012, according to Pam Maloy, a clerk at the Property Appraiser’s office. Tax Collector records also show the address changed in 2012.

From the exterior, the house doesn’t look unfit, but the fire damage is the reason it’s been condemned.

When the county moves forward on a demolition, it takes bids from private contractors. Roy D. Smiley just missed getting the bid for the Beach Drive house by about $100.

He owns Smiley’s Lawn & Tractor in Panama City and regularly wins bids for county demolition work. He said the house would require at least a couple of days to raze for him and a crew of three or four. Once demolished, the land must be also cleaned.

“All the debris has to be gone … so if somebody else buy’s the land, it’s ready to build (on) — all they would need is dirt,” Smiley said.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — As many as 15 houses bit the dust in the county this year — not by fire or act of God, but because they fell into disrepair and the county had them razed.

When that happens, Bay County eats those costs. Though they are applied to the property as a lien, county building official Larry Carnley has never seen the demolition expense recouped in his three years on the job.

“I don’t know of any that we’ve ever recovered,” he said.

One such property set for demolition sits at 6422 Beach Drive in unincorporated Panama City Beach. The county has already taken bids to demolish the two-story 1,984-square-foot house. The low bid was $4,329, submitted by a Cocoa demolition company. The county usually performs around 10 demolitions a year.

One roadblock to recouping the money is the county is low on the property’s creditor list, Carnley said.

“If there’s a mortgage on the property, the county would be the last in line to get any money,” he said.

The lien is not applied through taxes to the property; it attaches to the property itself, Carnley said. That’s a roadblock, but it gives the county a unique option. If it carries no mortgage, the County Commission could foreclose on it and take ownership of it to recover demolition costs.

“But I don’t know that they have ever foreclosed on one,” Carnley said.

The county tries to avoid executing the demolition itself. It posts multiple violation notices on the property and is willing to work with owners who make a good-faith attempt to correct the problems, Carnley said.

The county doesn’t go looking for these dilapidated homes either; it reviews possible violations on a complaint-generated basis, often driven by calls to county commissioners.

“We look at the worst case scenarios first,” Carnley said.

The demolition process will be halted if the homeowner can bring in an engineer to show the building is structurally sound.

The county has sent regular and certified mail notices, which came back return-to-sender. Likely that’s because she lives in Woodstock, Ga. Electronic records on the Tax Collector and Property Appraiser websites list that address and show the property is not under homestead exemption.

The Tax Collector’s website shows taxes have been paid on the property on time, and in full, since 2005. The most recent payment, of $1,231, was made Nov. 25.

When contacted by The News Herald, Miller said she had received no notice from the county and the mail should have forwarded from the beach house to her home near Atlanta.

“I haven’t been sent anything by the county,” she said.

Miller said the property was being taken over by the bank, a process that’s been going on since February, 2011. She bought it in 1998 while working at WJHG Channel 7, but a fire gutted the inside of the house.

“Honestly I haven’t been able to go back to Panama City since the fire,” she said. “It just emotionally destroyed me. It was going to be my retirement home and — yeah it was devastating.”

The county opened the case on the property in August, 2012. The notices are sent to the owner’s address listed on the Property Appraiser’s website, and back then the Beach Drive address was listed, Carnley said.

There’s no requirement to look “two or three times,” he said, for a new mailing address.

Carnley said no notices will be sent to the new owner address now that he is aware of it. He noted the process has taken over a year.

Carnley also said the county uses a private company to search for any other entities that have interests on the property. It found a mortgage company and sent it a letter, but nothing resulted from that.

The address was changed on Sept. 20, 2012, according to Pam Maloy, a clerk at the Property Appraiser’s office. Tax Collector records also show the address changed in 2012.

From the exterior, the house doesn’t look unfit, but the fire damage is the reason it’s been condemned.

When the county moves forward on a demolition, it takes bids from private contractors. Roy D. Smiley just missed getting the bid for the Beach Drive house by about $100.

He owns Smiley’s Lawn & Tractor in Panama City and regularly wins bids for county demolition work. He said the house would require at least a couple of days to raze for him and a crew of three or four. Once demolished, the land must be also cleaned.

“All the debris has to be gone … so if somebody else buy’s the land, it’s ready to build (on) — all they would need is dirt,” Smiley said.